Delivering IT Examinations--BSD Style

How to apply BSD methods to certification programs

While creating the standard for assessing BSD sysadmin skills, the BSD Certification Group identified several areas within the existing certification infrastructure that did not meet the needs of the BSD community. This talk will outline those areas then concentrate on the collaborative development of a BSD licensed testing engine.

The BSD projects have well defined mechanisms for running globally collaborative development and documentation projects. These include versioning systems, release engineering and security teams, a commit bit process, style guides, mentoring, translation teams, and mailing lists. In addition to the excellent code and documentation resulting from these mechanisms, those using BSD benefit from the BSD license.

The BSD Certification Group quickly realized that none of these mechanisms exist in the current IT certification world, including the existing certifications which cover Open Source operating systems and applications. Certifying bodies are closed groups, often associated with specific commercial vendors. Examinations are delivered using expensive, proprietary software whose security mechanisms are unavailable for inspection. Study materials are not freely available or created through a collaborative process. There is little to no association with existing post-secondary programs. In short, then entire process is closed, expensive, and seemingly designed to generate profit for commercial vendors.

The BSD Certification Group has strived to keep their process open, affordable, understandable, and auditable. In other words, they are breaking new ground in introducing BSD methods into the IT certification process.

One such example is the collaborative development of an exam delivery method. This talk will discuss the mechanisms used to structure the development, then give details of the delivery method itself.